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PM demands investigation into sheep cull

Karlis Salna, South East Asia Correspondent

Prime Minister Julia Gillard insists she has received assurances from her Pakistani counterpart Raja Pervez Ashraf that the brutal slaughter of 21,000 Australian sheep will be fully investigated.

Ms Gillard said she expressed her "concern about the graphic and very cruel images" during talks with Mr Ashraf on the sidelines of the Asia-Europe meeting in Vientiane.

Footage aired in Australia on the ABC's Four Corners program on Monday night showed the sheep - which had initially been bound for Bahrain - as part of a shipment exported by Wellard but being culled by authorities in Karachi.

Pakistani authorities had claimed that the animals were unfit for human consumption before they were destroyed last month.

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"I explained to him that Australians are distressed to see these acts of cruelty and that I wanted the matter investigated," Ms Gillard told reporters in Vientiane on Tuesday.

"He undertook to investigate the matter. I can't prejudge or pre-empt that, or say what structures will be used to do that.

"But I was very clear about Australia's concern, very strong in raising those concerns and very clear that this is something that has distressed the Australian people."

The fallout over the cull in Pakistan comes after a suspension of live exports to Indonesia last year after footage emerged of animals being mistreated in Indonesian abattoirs.

The latest development has sparked fresh calls from animal welfare groups for the live export trade to end.

But Ms Gillard said on Tuesday that she still held the view the live trade was sustainable.

"We've been working hard to ensure that this is a sustainable industry with appropriate standards for animal welfare," she said.

"We responded to acts of cruelty in Indonesia and we put in place a supply-chain assurance scheme so that we can now work through and track where animals are being slaughtered and whether or not the circumstances of that slaughter meets international standards."

Ms Gillard said the issue with the cull in Pakistan was different to circumstances of events in Indonesia, and was based on a "false claim".

Livestock officials in Karachi ordered the sheep to be culled after they allegedly tested positive for salmonella and actinomyces bacteria, despite a British laboratory having declared them clean and fit for human consumption.

Australia's live export trade is worth about $US1 billion a year and employs thousands of people.